When you are a creative person, and you have friends who are into serious IT jobs where they just code and go home without giving anything back to themselves creatively, there are a lot of changes you can see between your two lives, from friends, the hobbies you have and even the food you eat. But more importantly, it’s the people whom you surround yourself with.

Any top-level CEO will tell you the importance of the arts in their lives, and how important fine arts to the future of mankind. As such, go take a look at top level CEOs network list on LinkedIn, also check out famous artists, heads of video game studios and animation studios from across the world and check their networks on LinkedIn.

What is the most common, distinctive factor that you can notice, that you do not see in one who’s not very creative and doesn’t work in a creatively demanding job?

The most obvious: Their profiles are a blast to go through. Creative people tend to take wackier, off the usual path type of projects and deliver them successfully, creating a great profile for themselves in the process, something which inspires confidence.

We here at IACG understand this in our creative students, the need to create and inspire even more of the next generation that’ll follow them is something we take very seriously.

There are more differences in the profiles and networks of creative people against those who are not. Their network lists their fantastic skill set which is for all to see, creative people often engage in projects that inspire and educate many a people, even those who are generally not interested. The primary difference, however, would be in the fact that the glowing endorsements on their profiles are not for some boring task they did, but for creating something truly amazing with their innate talent, and contributing to the industry.

Object Oriented Programming is a core subject for Computer Science engineers in the various engineering colleges across the country. To many, this is just another subject they need to pass, but do they know that OOP, as it’s called in short, is one of the most important aspects of video game programming?

You see, video games can run anywhere between a few thousand lines of code to millions of lines of code (games like The Witcher cross well beyond a million, even a game as simple as Cut the Rope has 15000 lines of code), but you may be wondering what role OOP plays in this, if you aren’t a CS student. OOP helps organize code in such a way that it becomes easier to maintain and modify, by organizing it into objects.

So why is it, I wonder, that straight out of college, everyone from students, parents and relatives want the student to run the rat race and join an IT company instead of flexing their creative muscle and taking on something more challenging like programming a game? In fact, the more pertinent question here would be, why is engineering associated with IT jobs only? Every line of code written for the best games are written by the best software engineers in the world, there are old time greats like Chris Sawyer, who was such a genius he wrote his first game on his own, completely in machine code, which is pure insanity but he did it anyway. Of course, he did ask the studio backing him to let him go to amusement parks for ‘research’ if you know what I mean, but his genius in coding helped him achieve a herculean task.

You, too, can become like him. Today, game programming is not as hard as it used to be, many studios work with ready-made engine, licensed from creators, while big name studios spend the time and resources to create their own engines, which again requires a lot of programming knowledge, and for this, the video game industry needs -software developers.

You see, pushing a random line of code you found online for your work is not going to do anyone any good, we here at IACG understand the importance of programming in the creative world, not just in gaming. It is crucial to enjoy what you do for a living, so why not let your creative juices flow and work for a studio, coding a video game or a creative mobile app, even a program needed for a creative industry, to life.

Working in the creative industry will enable engineers to experience the closest thing to magic, it is literally creating worlds at your fingertips.

Sadly, the current state of engineering and post engineering are grim. People so obsessed with chasing IT jobs, they forget that their degrees weren’t even in the field of IT, this leads to half-hearted engineers taking the job from another half-hearted CSE and IT graduate, who is forced to work for another company that intentionally keeps fresher salary low and fires experienced staff to avoid paying them a lot, and these people willingly accept these jobs because they know they are expendable. Combine this with the fact that our education system literally encourages rote learning and no practical experience, and we have a legion of unemployable engineers, looking for jobs in fields that don’t want them, in hopes of earning a living, desperately trying to not fall into obscurity and having to make ends meet.

Why on earth is India so obsessed with creating Engineers? This is a question that must have popped in your heads a few times. Why only engineers, or doctors, why are people going into various streams, from animation to commerce, law or even social work frowned upon?

There are various reasons for this to happen, to put it bluntly, the generation of parents right now grew up in a time where being an Engineer meant a comfortable upper middle class life, which ensured a comfortable living for themselves and their families. This is also the generation that believed in raising families as the only way to be responsible in life, hence the word ‘settled’ is only used when a person gets married and starts a family, as if that is their only goal in life.

Life is an adventure, an adventure created by those who aren’t just in engineering fields. There are various fields which a student can take up in their life time, but the cornerstone of people enjoying what they do is to enjoy what they do. The problem here, then, lies in the fact that many students of the current generation lack the agency to make their own choice, that is to say, the choice of their field of study is made for them by their parents, who have notions developed in a bygone era.

Today, engineers are dime a dozen. Some engineers chase their dreams and get into more creative fields of work, like programming as a freelancer or going into development work for animated worlds where they create what they envision, but our education system has caused nearly a million new engineers to just study to pass their subjects instead of learning their subject, leading to many unemployable engineers willing to do a job for the lowest pay because they know if they don’t take up the job, someone else in a similar position will replace them like a cog in the machine.

This is not the life we want for our children, where the competition is so fierce and there are legions upon legions of engineers who are unemployable willing to do jobs at the lowest level for negligible pay. The age of engineering ensuring you live a comfortable middle class life is fast disappearing, and we can only hope when the current generation of youth become parents themselves, they realize the folly of the generation before them and fix this.

India is obsessed with engineers because of notions that don’t exist anymore, and it is harming the youth of this country.

Jeff Bezos is a clever man. Amazon Prime Video’s entry into India came with the announcement of many Indian shows that would be produced by local talent and YouTube stars AIB, along with many others, and their ridiculously affordable price tag of Rs. 499 per year which also benefits your shopping experience, was a major blow to Netflix in India.

However, Netflix shows no signs of stopping, as they continue to add regional and international content in large numbers almost every week. Combine this with the fact that Netflix does not compromise its content, very unlike Prime Video, and it can easily carve a niche for itself as a premium content provider in the Indian Market. One of the primary reasons why India pirates movies so much is because, ease of availability aside, the horrendous cuts on the movies released in theatres, but I digress.

Netflix specializes in content created for their audience worldwide, from superhero shows like Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist, to the upcoming Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro collaboration, Netflix understands the creative content that their fans want and give it to us, by constantly staying in touch with the fans and investing in crazy, over the top projects that would never be accepted on mainstream TV or in the movie theatre.

However, Amazon Prime Video will edge over Netflix in India for a very simple reason: local content. Amazon understands that Indians want something they can easily relate to in their online content. The reason why the TVF shows, The Pitchers and Permanent Roommates are so popular is because they are very Indian and very relatable to the kind of crowd that watches web series online, the urban youth.

Only by producing local content alongside revisiting their tariff plans, Netflix stand a chance to attract the non-urban youth and older generation into subscribing to their content. This will result in a battle amongst these content streaming providers, to produce better online content for us to consume. Personally, as a person who devours world cinema and the art form, this would lead to some amazing local content akin to the TV shows on DD back in the 90s, when India still produced amazing TV shows.

Designing Virtual Reality worlds are not just for video games, which is a whole other topic to be covered, but the applications of Virtual Reality can be applied to real life applications, for training and practical experience.

Simulations have been a popular tool for training new recruits since the inception of computer based simulations, like Flight simulator, which is quite popular with pilots for some casual flying with a proper setup, and it also facilitates adding flight sticks and other assorted accessories to make your experience flying a virtual flight as real as flying the real deal. A cursory google search will lead you to pictures of computer setups by Flight Simulator enthusiasts that are amazing to look at. When I was a child, I remember going to HAL office in Bangalore for a flight simulator experience.

The reason I’m speaking about flight simulators, and simulators in general, is because this stuff works, and developing a VR simulator for basic training will not only elevate the amount of realism when it comes to being trained by simulators, it can also become the most effective method of peacetime air force and infantry training by adding the necessary equipment to felicitate the process.

Video Games like ArmA are already a very good army simulator, where you can play as a soldier from fighting on the front lines to going into special ops, the United States army realized the potential of training new recruits with VR, and have implemented it, there are instances where recruits are given VR headsets and given exercises to complete, paratroopers can be trained in skydiving without investing in multiple real life jumps, by strapping a parachute harness onto the recruit and giving them a VR headset.

Virtual Reality is already making waves in military training in the United States, in the coming years, there’ll be an increase in VR training, and this opens open prospects for game designers and animators to design simulators that help the troops in their training.

Keeping the changing trends of the world in mind, we here at IACG train our students to adapt to the rapidly changing multimedia and animation technology world. VR is the future, and it’s happening now, the students who will design the worlds for this are being trained right now at IACG.